Petition to rename SFO after Harvey Milk draws international support

Like so many San Francisco firsts, the effort to make our airport the first in the world to be named after a gay person has become a national and international cause celebre.

A new Change.org petition calling for San Francisco International Airport to be named for slain gay rights leader Harvey Milk has gathered about 20,000 signatures — many of them coming from outside California and even the United States.

The Harvey Milk Foundation has so far contributed $4,500 to a campaign to get the measure on the ballot, and a new website — www.HarveyMilkSFO.com — also makes the case.

The problem? None of that matters if Supervisor David Campos can’t get a sixth vote on the Board of Supervisors to place a measure authorizing the name change on the November ballot.

He announced his legislation last month with four co-sponsors — Supervisors John Avalos, Eric Mar, Jane Kim and Scott Wiener — but has so far not found that precious sixth vote to make the effort a reality. Or at least to give voters the chance to make it a reality.

Supporters, including from letter signers from around the country, are flooding the e-mail inboxes of the hold-outs and are particularly targeting swing votes London Breed, Malia Cohen and David Chiu. They or their aides told us they haven’t decided either way.

No supervisor has publicly said they oppose the measure. It’s one of those efforts where you’re either loudly, wildly in favor or pretty much silent.

Privately, politicos say they’ve heard from plenty of local constituents, including gay and lesbian residents, who like the brand name of SFO, don’t think it’s worth the cost, fear the embarrassment of losing at the ballot or just don’t think it’s worth getting worked up over either way.

Campos said he’s “cautiously optimistic” that another supervisor will eventually sign on. He has asked the Board of Supervisors’ budget and legislative analyst to look at the costs of the name change; he originally said it could be done for less than $250,000, but airport officials said it’ll be more like $4 million.

Campos said he’s willing to make compromises such as changing airport signage over five years to spread out the costs and seeking private financing to do it. The proposal is scheduled to be heard at the rules committee March 21. It may be apparent then how this will all shake out since the committee is comprised of Cohen, Breed and their fellow swing voter, Norman Yee.

Yee said Campos asked him if he would co-sponsor the legislation originally, which he refused to do. But he hasn’t ruled out voting for it. He said he’s hardly heard a peep from his constituents in District Seven about the airport name change and is far more focused on pedestrian safety and small businesses.

“A lot of people in the city do care, but certainly the big percentage of people aren’t coming from D7,” he said. “It’s not one of my priorities.”

If we had to bet, we’d say Campos will eventually secure a sixth vote — and that more supervisors may hop on the bandwagon once it’s a done deal. And then the real fun begins — convincing the voters.